BAGHDAD – A wave of apparently coordinated bomb attacks in Iraq’s capital has killed two Christians and wounded 16, further stoking fears in a community already terrified after a massacre at a church there two months ago.
Fourteen bombs were placed at different Christian homes late on Thursday, an interior ministry official said on Friday.
“Two Christians were killed and 16 wounded” by the 10 bombs that went off, while security forces carried out controlled detonations of the other four, the official said. The only fatal attack was in the central district of Al-Ghadir, where a home-made bomb exploded at around 8:00 pm (1700 GMT), killing the two Christians and wounding three others.
Most of the bombs, which targeted Christian homes in seven different part of the city, were in the central district of Karrada, the official said. Three devices wounded three Christians there, and all four of the controlled detonations were also in Karrada. Another bomb targeted a house in Al-Ilam neighbourhood in southern Baghdad, wounding one person; two bombs wounded four people in Dora in the south of the city and one bomb in Saidiya, also in the south, wounded two people.
Another device targeted a Christian home in Yarmuk in western Baghdad, wounding one. A house in Khadra, also in the west of the city, was targeted by a bomb that wounded two people.
“It’s a mess. It shows the incapability of the government to restore security,” said Father Yousef Thomas Mirkis, the head of the Dominican order in Iraq. “It is very difficult to understand why people attack the Christians, because we do not have any political power and we are not a threat,” he said.
Father Saad Sirop Hanna, the head priest at a Chaldean Catholic church in central Baghdad, said “the purpose of these attacks is to threaten the Christians and force them to flee from Iraq.” The US embassy in Baghdad denounced the bombings. “We condemn the attacks,” said embassy spokesman David Ranz.
The bombings came almost two months to the day after an October 31 attack by militants on Our Lady of Salvation church in central Baghdad, which left the 44 worshippers, two priests and seven security forces members dead.
